Reporters killed and injured in the field, a level of censorship not seen since the Soviet period, massive disinformation… In Eastern Europe, beyond the human tragedies, the war waged by Russia (155th) against Ukraine is creating devastating consequences for press freedom in the region. As many as five journalists and media workers have died as a result of gunfire during the first month of the Russian offensive, which began on 24 February 2022. The Russian military has deliberately targeted news sources in territories it occupies and has tried to coerce the local media’s cooperation. In Russia itself, the government has taken complete control of news and information by establishing extensive wartime censorship, blocking the media, and pursuing non-compliant journalists, forcing many of them into exile. This began in 2021, after the toughening of the law on media as “foreign agents” and after prosecutions linked to the coverage of now-imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny’s fate.

This control of information does not stop at Russia’s borders. The Kremlin is imposing its vision of the war on some of its neighbors, especially in Belarus (153th), where independent journalists continue to be persecuted for their work since the controversial presidential election of 9 August 2020, and where more than 20 media workers are languishing in prison. Alexander Lukashenko did not hesitate to divert a plane, on 23 May 2021, to arrest an opposition journalist who had gone into exile. A growing number of media outlets are being labeled “extremist”, and reading and sharing their content on social networks is subject to criminal prosecution.

The media in the Caucasus are sometimes blocked by the Russian regulatory agency when the government finds articles unacceptable. And Central Asian governments pressure media to provide more “neutral” coverage of the conflict. In Turkmenistan (177th), one of the world’s most closed-off countries, and always near the bottom of the Index, the media – all controlled by the government – ignore the war.

In Turkey (149th), the “hyper-presidency” of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his authoritarianism are accompanied by a denial of freedom of the press and interference in the judicial system. Even if the courts tend to imprison when Erdogan demands it, some judges have recently come out against “this repression that goes too far”: journalists have been acquitted of abusive charges such as “insulting the president”, “belonging to a terrorist organisation”, or “propaganda”. Judicial review now takes precedence over the imprisonment of journalists. In July 2021, for the first time since the state of emergency was declared, journalists mounted a massive protest over the brutal arrest of AFP photo-journalist Bülent Kiliç.

Over a two-year period, two journalists were murdered in Turkey : Güngor Arslan, editor-in-chief of Ses Kocaeli, on 19 February 2022, and Hazim Özsu, presenter of a program on Radio Rahmet FM, gunned down in Bursa in March 2021 by one of his listeners. The alleged murderer was arrested six days later.